The amount saved by diy'ing a hdd upgrade vs. weaknees service is about about $30-50. The cost of a new lifetimed tivo is $600-1000. Most people spending that kind of money won't mind that quite negligible difference considering the large overall price, in fact they'll appreciate it. This is because most people don't want to go anywhere near the inside of a tivo. Weaknees is for them. If you wanna diy (for the record I upgraded my premiere myself and plan to do my roamio plus eventually) then go ahead. Who cares what other people want to do?

Please keep the weaKnees discussion relevant to this thread and sub-forum. Since all you need is a blank drive for a Roamio upgrade, the markup is actually >$100, even if you buy an AV drive. There is an additional charge to have them do it for you plus you have pay for shipping your TiVo to them. Exactly what "tools and procedures" did weaKnees have to develop for this? Maybe when you pay them the additional $79 for them to do the upgrade and maintain your settings and recordings, but otherwise nothing.

Whether or not you buy a blank drive elsewhere or get an "upgrade kit" from weaKnees, you still technically void the warranty on the TiVo when you crack the case to replace the existing drive.

The amount saved by diy'ing a hdd upgrade vs. weaknees service is about about $30-50. The cost of a new lifetimed tivo is $600-1000. Most people spending that kind of money won't mind that quite negligible difference considering the large overall price, in fact they'll appreciate it. This is because most people don't want to go anywhere near the inside of a tivo. Weaknees is for them. If you wanna diy (for the record I upgraded my premiere myself and plan to do my roamio plus eventually) then go ahead. Who cares what other people want to do?

Weaknees is charging a ~$100 premium (compared to buying the drive from amazon) on the upgrade kit plus $49 for the installation service. If it is worth it to you go for it. $150 sort of makes sense with installation, but the DIY kit is just a rip off IMO.

The upgrade kit for any other TiVo makes sense as they are not plug and play.

Will I for sure have to do this? I've never read about this before your post. Sounds like it could be a hassle.

I could be wrong, but I don't think we know for sure whether or not you need to disable Intellipark for a drive being installed in a Roamio. More than likely yes, but I don't believe it has actually been verified.

As to the hassle - yes, it is a bit, especially considering you can't use a USB dock for this and there is conflicting information as to whether or not it will work via eSata.

One other thing - do we know for sure that none of the Roamios use the streaming commands if it detects a drive that supports them?

Weaknees is charging a ~$100 premium (compared to buying the drive from amazon) on the upgrade kit plus $49 for the installation service. If it is worth it to you go for it. $150 sort of makes sense with installation, but the DIY kit is just a rip off IMO.

The upgrade kit for any other TiVo makes sense as they are not plug and play.

OK I wasn't looking at the upgrade kit, I was comparing the new roamio plus + new hdd price to the new roamio plus already upgraded by weaknees price. Which would be 400 + 120 vs 570 = $50 difference, or less if you pay more for the drive. I see now that the upgrade on the basic model is a bit more. I already stated I do my own upgrades, I just don't follow why people are bothered that others are not like them, don't want to open their tivo, and are happy to pay a few extra bucks (less than sales tax on a tivo + lifetime) to get it upgraded for them.

OK I wasn't looking at the upgrade kit, I was comparing the new roamio plus + new hdd price to the new roamio plus already upgraded by weaknees price.

I think the weaKnees prices for a "Complete DVR" upgraded Roamio Plus is actually a decent deal. For not too much more in cost, you get a 180-day warranty rather than technically voiding the 90-day TiVo warranty of you go the DIY route.

I suppose the price that weaKnees charges for a Roamio upgrade kit could be considered to be a "tax" on stupidity.

I think the weaKnees prices for a "Complete DVR" upgraded Roamio Plus is actually a decent deal. For not too much more in cost, you get a 180-day warranty rather than technically voiding the 90-day TiVo warranty of you go the DIY route.

I suppose the price that weaKnees charges for a Roamio upgrade kit could be considered to be a "tax" on stupidity.

Stupidity is a rather strong word. Ignorance is more appropriate, in that it is well established that TiVos don't have an easy hard drive upgrade procedure, that this has only changed in the last couple of weeks, and that 99% of TiVo owners probably never visit this forum.

Stupidity is a rather strong word. Ignorance is more appropriate, in that it is well established that TiVos don't have an easy hard drive upgrade procedure, that this has only changed in the last couple of weeks, and that 99% of TiVo owners probably never visit this forum.

I don't think stupidity is too strong a word to use in this case. Anyone willing to go the DIY route (it's still DIY using a "kit" from weaKnees) who doesn't perform their due diligence is stupid. There is a difference between ignorance and willful ignorance.

In the old days we just used any hard drive we had around for TiVo upgrades. Why is this so different?

I think my hubby bought the green drive on his lunch hour. Guess ill have to see how it goes.

Btw $9 for overnight/Saturday shipping. It's gone up quite a bit.

Once you install the drive and have the TiVo up and running, try doing a warm reboot (restarting the system from the menus) and a cold reboot (pull the plug, count to 10, plug it back in.)

On the TiVoHD and Premiere lines, the non-AV drives would have difficulty restarting from one of these states (cold boot, I believe, but too lazy to search to verify.) This was due to the parking feature in the drive.

If you recover from both boots normally, you should be fine, if not you'll have to pull the drive and look for instructions to run wdidle3 on the drive. It's not terribly complicated, but will take a bit of digging, downloading, etc. to be able to do it.

Once it's done, you should be all set.

I installed a WD Red drive in my Roamio Basic and did not have to run wdidle3 - hopefully it's no longer an issue with TiVo's, but I don't think anybody has done testing to confirm yet.

Hope everything goes smoothly for you guys.

Edited to add: if you've done upgrades on previous versions of TiVo, running wdidle3 will be no trouble at all, once you have the software in hand, and a computer to use it on.
I'm also fairly certain I was able to run the utility with a drive attached to a USB - SATA dock, so even if you're on a laptop, I believe you will be able to do it.

I don't think stupidity is too strong a word to use in this case. Anyone willing to go the DIY route (it's still DIY using a "kit" from weaKnees) who doesn't perform their due diligence is stupid. There is a difference between ignorance and willful ignorance.

My first two drive upgrade (for a series 2) was from WK and I learned a lot, than when more info was available I did my own upgrades, when you purchase an upgrade kit from WK you get to keep you original drive, that has some value.

I could be wrong, but I don't think we know for sure whether or not you need to disable Intellipark for a drive being installed in a Roamio. More than likely yes, but I don't believe it has actually been verified.

I recently had to reboot my Roamio basic w/ a 3TB WD AV-GP drive by pulling the plug. It booted fine--no problems.

Someone stuck a drive from a NAS, which had data on it, in their Roamio and it worked fine. However because your drive is from an actual TiVo there might be some sort of conflict. I don't think anyone has tried that yet. If you give it a shot let us know how it goes. It's unlikely to cause any issues with the hardware so worst case scenario is it wont work and you'll have to pop it into a computer and wipe it clean before trying again.

Edit: Keep in mind that you are definitely going to lose all your recordings. It wont just boot up. Best case scenario is it'll wipe the drive for you and start you over at Guided Setup

Someone stuck a drive from a NAS, which had data on it, in their Roamio and it worked fine. However because your drive is from an actual TiVo there might be some sort of conflict. I don't think anyone has tried that yet. If you give it a shot let us know how it goes. It's unlikely to cause any issues with the hardware so worst case scenario is it wont work and you'll have to pop it into a computer and wipe it clean before trying again.

that makes sense, the premier that it's in I hardly ever use (and nothing on it I need to save) and will sell/give away when I upgrade. It was just for the times when I needed more than the two turners on my main soon to be spare Premier.

Someone stuck a drive from a NAS, which had data on it, in their Roamio and it worked fine. However because your drive is from an actual TiVo there might be some sort of conflict. I don't think anyone has tried that yet. If you give it a shot let us know how it goes. It's unlikely to cause any issues with the hardware so worst case scenario is it wont work and you'll have to pop it into a computer and wipe it clean before trying again.

Edit: Keep in mind that you are definitely going to lose all your recordings. It wont just boot up. Best case scenario is it'll wipe the drive for you and start you over at Guided Setup

I actually took a WD20EURS out of a Premiere and dropped it into a Roamio Plus without wiping the disk first. Worked fine, no issues.

The Premiere reported the capacity as 317 HD hours, while the Roamio says 315 HD hours. I also switched cable providers, so that may account for the difference.

I actually took a WD20EURS out of a Premiere and dropped it into a Roamio Plus without wiping the disk first. Worked fine, no issues.

The Premiere reported the capacity as 317 HD hours, while the Roamio says 315 HD hours. I also switched cable providers, so that may account for the difference.

I compared the partition tables between a Premiere XL4 (2TB) and a Roamio with a WD20EURS this morning. They were identical in most regards, but a Roamio uses a bigger swap and a bigger /var partition. Even though the OS partitions are just 4K placeholders to flash memory on a Roamio, it was enough to shrink the final media partition by about 768MB. That may account for the difference.

It's nice to know that even a TiVo drive can be dropped into a Roamio without prior formatting. Good work!

It's all a guess anyway. The number of hours is based on an estimated bitrate. They don't actually know the bitrates of what you'll be recording so it could shift +/- 100 hours if they're off by just 5Mbps.

It's all a guess anyway. The number of hours is based on an estimated bitrate. They don't actually know the bitrates of what you'll be recording so it could shift +/- 100 hours if they're off by just 5Mbps.

Amen! My OTA recordings vary from about 3.5GB/hour to over 5GB/hour depending on the network. It's weird, but I get a better picture quality watching Hart of Dixie on CW even though the bitrate is lower than the majors.

Is CW 720p? 720p has twice the frame rate but a little less then half the resolution, plus progressive frames are easier to encode then interlaced, so they can get away with lower bitrates while still retaining a nice looking picture.

Is CW 720p? 720p has twice the frame rate but a little less then half the resolution, plus progressive frames are easier to encode then interlaced, so they can get away with lower bitrates while still retaining a nice looking picture.

I'll have to answer that one later when something I record comes back around. I should have looked at the files with MediaInfo or VRD, but I just watched & deleted them.

It may just be a Houston thing and encoding tech varies, but somehow their signal just looks better even with a smaller file size / hour than everyone but ABC.

Is CW 720p? 720p has twice the frame rate but a little less then half the resolution, plus progressive frames are easier to encode then interlaced, so they can get away with lower bitrates while still retaining a nice looking picture.

If it's KIAH it's 1080i although local cable companies could be doing what ever with the signal.